Kotter International helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in their organizations. We employ the knowledge and research of Dr. John Kotter, the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at Harvard Business School.
Kotter International helps organizations become more agile and move faster, with alignment and acceleration. Combining deep business acumen and experience, we provide the guidance that helps our clients implement their strategies through the 8-Step Process for Leading Change.

3 Leadership Tips for Creating Organic Change

My colleagues and I have spoken at length on this blog about how hierarchy-driven change can create barriers to success. Today, Dennis Goin explains how a light touch from leadership can yield outstanding results.

Sometimes great innovations happen because they’re driven by exceptional leaders. Other times innovations happen because great leaders knew when to step aside and let them happen organically. This latter type of change only happens when true leadership exists – the type that recognizes initiative, fuels it, and gives it boundaries without killing the enthusiasm behind it.

One of our clients was at a brick wall. They wanted to create a space where they could test some lean strategies. The idea was to create a “laboratory” where we could modify the current processes and make incremental improvements, and then transfer those improvements, integrating them into the larger production line. Space was constricted; we kept running into barriers. There was literally no more room on the campus to create this space.

Meanwhile, in another area of the organization, several employees with children (or children on the way) had formed a group to open an on-site daycare. Now, childcare facilities are notoriously complicated with approvals, restrictions and regulations – but this group of parents was persistent. The parents – reaching deep and taking a big chance – wrote an application for a grant for their childcare facility. They succeeded: they received $6 million to build a facility on their campus appropriate for hosting their on-site daycare.

The true cost was only going to be $2 million for the daycare, so, being responsible citizens, they had planned to return the remaining $4 million. Unfortunately, the team working on the daycare was not the same team working on the laboratory. But luckily, these two groups happened to be tied together by a team called a Guiding Coalition – a group that voluntarily took on work initiatives about which they were passionate and helped to find additional volunteers to drive the projects. Someone on the Guiding Coalition saw the connection between the new funding for space for the daycare and the needed funding for the laboratory.

Please look past the idea of misappropriation of funds to see the real lesson here. This story is a beautiful one that highlights some simple leadership tips. How can leaders create this type of well-oiled, voluntary, passionate machine to drive change in your organization?

Go hands-off. This is difficult, but it doesn’t mean that your people will be running amok. Give them a vision that helps drive them toward a common goal. The daycare doesn’t seem like it would contribute to the bottom line, but in the end it was essential for helping the organization implement their lean model.

Develop good roots. Quality-of-life improvements are not the typical drivers behind increases in efficiency or product innovation. But needless to say, an organization full of clock-watchers does not make creative leaps. If an employee or two within the ranks requests support for their own grassroots initiative, you have nothing to lose by supporting it. The test of your leadership is to provide the guardrails that help them achieve wins that fit within the goals of the greater organization without dampening their passion.

Help them form a network. Much like our traditional management hierarchy, these types of grassroots efforts often work best within a structure. Without structure, the daycare would have been built and the remaining dollars returned, and no lab space would have ever been created. Dr. John Kotter’s latest article describes a type of structure that helps channel these types of efforts (along-side the management structure) to maximize employee passion behind them, keep the effort channeled within the guardrails of the company vision, and without getting in the way of the responsibilities and deliverables of day-to-day work. A network can operate alongside the traditional management structure, keeping the effort channeled while minimizing its impact on day-to-day responsibilities.

These grassroots efforts can drive valuable organizational changes. With boundaries presented in the form of support and by providing a very delicate hand, leadership can harness the power and help steer it to overcome huge barriers or create incredible innovations.

Dennis Goin is Executive Vice President for Engagements at Kotter International. John Kotter is the chief innovation officer at Kotter International, a firm that helps leaders accelerate strategy implementation in their organizations. He is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School.

***For more about how organizations can develop the agility required to succeed in today’s rapidly changing world, read my new article, “Accelerate,” featured in the November issue of Harvard Business Review.

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